


Stepping Stones

by archeradicators



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Body Modification, Brain Surgery, Emotional Intimacy, F/F, F/M, Medical Angst, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-13 17:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21497803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archeradicators/pseuds/archeradicators
Summary: Change comes much more quickly than you want it to. Even though you know she'll always be there for you, you wonder why she bothers sometimes.This is mostly meowrails with a side of Aradia<3Nepeta.
Relationships: Nepeta Leijon & Equius Zahhak, Nepeta Leijon/Aradia Megido
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Stepping Stones

The recovery from the surgery takes... regrettably longer than you'd predicted. It was the first of its kind on Earth C, possibly also the first of it's kind on regular Earth and absolutely the first of its kind on Alternia for sure. Even with that in mind, the period of time where you couldn't move your arms, hands, fingers... Well, it made you incredibly anxious. Your ability to recover quickly was something you had no doubt in until your grip strength hadn't come back in the three months you'd set aside for that recovery, and the weight of what you'd actually done had slammed down on you like a guillotine blade.

Brain surgery, even with biowires, is always something tricky. Especially if it's untested. No matter how thoroughly you've planned it. 

Regardless, you're sitting up in your bed at home tonight and reading a book with pages you clumsily turned all on your own. And you're so proud of that. You can write, too, but your drawing skill hasn't been so easy to recover. It makes drafting new prosthetic pieces nigh impossible. Thus, your usual pastime hobby of fiddling around with the human and troll central nervous systems is still currently unreachable to you. 

Still, though, you suppose it could be a lot worse. You could have died, been revived, and been too afraid to try again. You could still be doomed to break every single thing you put your hands to. 

Aradia also stopped by unexpectedly a few months after you made your move with the surgery to mention that you might have just been cursed. By a long dead ghost. She told you that she might have taken platonic pity on you (you!) and dispelled it if you'd told her about your dangerous surgical plans. But you're unsure if you put a lot of stock into that. 

She did leave it open to interpretation as to whether or not she hadn't tried to help you earlier because of what you'd done to her with the robot thing. You wouldn't blame her if she had. 

She and Nepeta had left to go do something tonight and it wasn't much of a concern to you. Only... That she keeps stopping by, and that they keep doing things together. You tend to forget about her comings and goings once she's gone though, so you keep forgetting to ask Nepeta about it. 

To be fair, a lot of your thought process with regard to Nepeta has been taken up by immense guilt and gratitude in this last half sweep. 

She's been so patient with you in all of this. She's always been so patient with you in everything that you do, though. You still know that her efforts to help you are something to be treasured. In your quiet moments, you always catch yourself wondering why someone so thoroughly wonderful would bother spending so much time with you. 

You close the book slowly and sigh. You can't focus on it anymore. Your glasses also follow the book, their arms carefully behind the cracked lenses. You dim the bedroom's lights to their lowest setting with the remote and close your eyes. 

The light from the biowires on your cheeks is still perceivable even with your eyelids closed. You knew that it would be the case and that it would be unavoidable, but it still is very irritating when you're already in a bad mood. Getting used to always being in low lighting has helped, but you're still acclimating to it. 

You shift in the bed underneath the top sheet, and move the pillows behind you so that you could nap on them if your mind so chose to. Pulling the comforter over your shoulders, and still in residual shock that your hands can do that without tearing the blanket to shreds, you prepare to settle down for a while. 

To your surprise, though, you hear your front door click open. You sit up and look over your shoulder at the clock. 1:43AM. Their loud laughter follows the door closing. They both sound sort of inebriated, though they night is still very young. 

It makes you worry for her but you know that your hovering does nothing to help her, so you stay underneath your blanket and resolve to let them be. 

They seem to have different plans, though. The peace of the night is broken by your bedroom door swinging wide and the doorknob crashing against the wall with a loud slam. You jump, heart in your throat, and sit up as quickly as you can. You clutch the blanket to your chest as tightly as you can manage. 

Nepeta is on you in an instant, her warm arms tightly clinging to your shoulders. Knowing it's her calms you immediately, but you're still sort of recovering from the sudden intrusion. She smells residually of alcohol, like she'd been drinking but it'd been a little while. Maybe she'd spilled a drink on her clothes. 

“Eq-ui-hiss!” She chimes, hugging you tightly with each syllable. She buries her face into your shoulder. 

“H-hello, Nepeta,” you reply, arms slow to complete the embrace but catching up to do so anyway, “You're back early. Is everything okay?” 

You look up from her and make eye contact with Aradia in the doorway. She waves, smiling at the two of you, and you're unnerved. Probably for no reason.

“We got kicked out of the movie theater,” she says, laughing to herself, “I think they didn't like how loud we were, but screw them!”

“Yeah!” Nepeta lets go of you and flops onto the bed beside you, easily out of your weak arms, “Screw 'em! We were having fun.” She crosses her arms and grunts into them, sinking back into her coat. 

“I'm sorry they kicked you out,” you tell her, papping her gently on the shoulder, “In their defense, though... You do smell of alcohol. The two of you probably were being a bit rowdy.”

She looks back up at you, almost scandalized. “No! We were being just as meowdy as everyone else!”

Aradia laughs again and walks unsteadily towards the two of you. The intrusion into your personal room like that has you decidedly uncomfortable, your palms predictably damp and clammy. You want to hide underneath the blanket, but you don't. You're an adult now, for Pete's sake. 

“We were kind of being a little loud, though,” She says affectionately, leaning over your bed on the other side in order to touch Nepeta's other shoulder. “You were screaming at the love interest when she broke the main girl's heart.”

Nepeta doesn't even react to the touch, though you know if she were in the right frame of mind she probably would have. “It was so purrly acted!” She yells, bristling at her, “You could tell that their hearts weren't in it. I could tell that!” 

“You were crying about it, actually,” Aradia teases her. 

It's almost like you aren't even in the room. You cough into your fist, politely reminding them, and look away. Nepeta puts her arm around your shoulders between your body and the headboard, and leans on you heavily. She's like a sack of potatoes. 

“I was not!” The frown in her voice mellows to a playful denial, pouting almost. “I wasn't crying about that, nope.”

“You were though!” Giggling, you hear Aradia lean over and kiss her somewhere on her face. “As fun as it is arguing with you, though, I think I should be getting out of here,” she leans off of the bed and you hear her shift her weight to standing.

Oh. 

Well, that's one way of telling you that they were on a date, you guess. You're shaking, though you do feel very silly for being so anxious.

“Nooo, stay,” Nepeta whines, weakly reaching her hand out and following Aradia as she walks to the door. 

“We've spent so much time together already though! I'll see you again next week,” She says, and waves directly at you before she walks away. “Bye, Nepeta!”

“Bye,” Nepeta conceeds grumpily. You listen to hear Aradia leave, but once she gets past where you can see down the dark hallway you don't actually hear anything at all. You wonder if she paused time, moved through it so quickly that you would never know. You're still shaking. 

Nepeta rolls over onto your side and buries her face in your hair again. You take a deep breath and sink back down, taking her with you by default. She leans most of her weight onto you and you're thankful for the pressure. 

You wait a moment for the two of you to settle and readjust before you speak. 

“So, were you going to tell me that the two of you...?” You say, the anxiety in your voice giving you explicitly away. 

She's quiet for a moment, going as far as to stop breathing. You know her well enough to know that she just realized that the cat was out of that particular bag. “Oh...” She says, “Oh, shit!”

You laugh quietly, and she pushes herself upwards so that she can look at you, hovering over you and putting all of her weight onto both of your shoulders with her hands. “Language,” you remind her, though not seriously. 

“Shit! I'm so sorry,” She looks genuinely upset, “I was going to tell you! I purromise I was, I just... I furgot today... Things moved really quickly!” 

“Hey, hey, look at me, Nepeta,” you say, “I trust you. I don't think you would have hidden something like this from me without reason, and I don't think you meant to forget to mention this to me at all.” You reach up and pap her face, wrapping your other arm around her back and encouraging her to fold back down on top of you. 

That you can do that at all makes you a little teary-eyed. You blink it away so that she won't see. 

“I didn't,” she says, “I... I was going to ask you if you were okay with it, cause it's Aradia, but...”

“It's okay with me,” you reassure her quickly, surprising yourself, “What I felt for her was a long time ago. I honestly... haven't thought about her in a while.” 

The truth of the matter isn't actually that far from what you've said. You do think about her from time to time, but you aren't really sure how you feel about her anymore. If Nepeta is going to be dating her, though... It does hurt a little bit, but you're happy for her. You are okay with it, you think, as long as it's for her.

Nepeta curls up to your side and huffs. You hum in response, and she ungracefully maneuvers a hand to pap at your face. You hold the hand, cradling it really, and kiss her fingers. She giggles, stretches, and moves both of your hands to rest next to her face on your chest. 

“Equius, you can tell me if you don't want me to, and I won't.” 

“I am exceedingly and explicitly well aware of that,” you tell her, “I am not going to get in the way of your happiness, Nepeta.”

“You wouldn't be! Your feelings are impurrtant to me too, you big silly.” 

You let that hang for a moment, unwilling to argue with her or agree with her on the import of your emotions. 

She prods you after a bit. “Equius? Your feelings are important to me, too.”

“I know,” you tell her, turning onto your side. You rearrange your hands so that her head is resting on your arm. “Just as yours are important to me.”

You brush her hair out of her face and kiss her forehead. She settles in with you, whatever alcohol she had making her undeniably more sleepy than she would have otherwise been. 

“Mine don't matter more than yours do, though,” she mumbles, “If you're not okay with this please tell me before I get serious about her.”

“Nepeta, when have I ever hidden anything from you? You know that I would tell you anything important that happened to me.”

“Hrmmm,” She grumbles, “I know, I know...”

“I think it's good that you're seeing someone, you know? Both of us have been kind of lonely in the other quadrants as of late,” you say, “Even though we have each other, being alone in the others is not exactly the platonic ideal of life.”

She laughs a small, resigned laugh. “Yeah, you're not wrong there.”

“My point is that I'm happy that you've found someone new to spend your nights with.”

“You'll be okay, right?” She looks you directly in the eyes, “I know you've been struggling with the surgery lately, Equius.” 

“Yes, I'll be okay,” you reassure her, closing your eyes and pushing your face into her shoulder. “I just need to get used to these darn lights.”

“Mmm,” she hums, “They are kind of bright when you're awake.”

“They're kind of bright when I'm attempting to sleep, too,” you say. “Thankfully, I seem to have found a really good way to dampen them just now.”

She giggles, pats your head. “I'd be happy to do that for mew any day, any night... Whatever time it is right now.”

“Pale for you,” you mumble, “Thank you for being here for me for this long. I appreciate you so much more than words could express.”

“Pale fur you too!” She snuggles against your face and shoulder, purring quietly. “I wouldn't dream of going anywhere, expecpurrly when mew need me.”

You also start to purr quietly. You really don't know where you would be without her, and in this moment you know you wouldn't give her up for anything else in the entire world. 

“That pun was really terrible, Nepeta,” you quietly say.

She giggles.

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of just setting up where Equius and Nepeta are in the 10 year gap between Karkat stepping through the door and the current time. 
> 
> I feel like if I can string enough drabbles together this will eventually make sense as an AU, haha.


End file.
